Corporate leaders at IKEA, seeing opportunity in retailers’ recent market exits and a surge in value-hunting consumers, will spend $2.2 billion deepening the brand’s United States presence. The news came from a Reuters report in the New York Post.

In 1985, IKEA established its United States foothold in Conshohocken.

Since then, the Swedish provider of hard-to-pronounce, hard-to-resist furniture and gadgets opened in cities that include New Orleans, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Las Vegas.

“It is in all the states across the U.S. where we see opportunities. But I would say in particular the South, where we see big demand that we have not so far been able to respond to,” said Tolga Öncü, head of IKEA Retail at Ingka Group. The firm is the Netherlands holding company of most IKEA stores worldwide.

The scope of the expansion includes eight new, full-size IKEA stores (locations TBD), nine “plan-and-order points” for orders, and upgrades to existing sites.

IKEA’s latest plan announcement comes atop its advancement of new stores in San Francisco and Arlington, Va., which are still proceeding.

New IKEA sites are expected to create 2,000 jobs, according to data from Ingka Group.

The full story is in the New York Post.

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